Many such patients, whether in hospital or at home, need assistance in movement, for example between a bed and a chair, between a chair and a bath, between a bed or chair and a toilet area or between floor and bed. Whenever the patient is unable to support himself or herself, the movement of the patient has to be carried out by nursing staff, healthcare staff or carers who must manually lift and move the patient. This task can exceed the weight lifting limits generally recommended for one or even two persons, and often nursing staff, healthcare staff or carers themselves suffer from back damage or back strain. Much of this lifting work is also done by the family members of patients in their own homes.
It has become commonplace to use a wheeled or overhead hydraulic or electrical hoist to lift a patient from a bed, but this generally requires the patient to be placed in a sling to which the hoist may be attached. Such slings need to be placed beneath and around the patient before lifting commences, and in the case of a disabled patient unable to assist the carer, the patient still needs to be lifted manually and positioned over the sling, in order to fix the sling in a position from which lifting can commence. Even when lifting does commence, the sensation of being lifted in a canvas sling is often a source of great trauma for the patient, because the flexible canvas sling provides very little feeling of security for the patient. It is for this reason that many attempts have been made to provide a lifting frame which could be used with a hoist to lift a sitting patient. It has been much more of a challenge to design a frame to be used with a hoist to raise into a sitting position a patient who was lying face upwards on a bed. One such frame is disclosed in my Patent Specification GB-B-2396147 which discloses a lifting frame that can be used to raise a patient from a face-up prone lying position to a sitting position. The lifting frame of that granted Patent utilizes a balance effect between the patient's upper body and the patient's lower body. The weight of the upper body is taken by the patient support elements including side pads which engage beneath the armpits of the patient and against opposite sides of the patient's ribcage, and the weight of the patient's lower body is taken by support means which support the patient's upper legs or posterior. The patient's upper and lower body weights are supported on opposite sides of a pivotal mounting so that the above balance effect takes place. The patient can therefore be lifted from a bed using the patient lifting frame which is raised by a hoist, and can easily be moved to a sitting position.
US-A-2004/0074414 discloses a patient lifting frame for use with a lifting hoist, for lifting a patient from a sitting to a standing position and is for use in assisting the patient to walk and to exercise. That patient support frame is capable of moving a patient from a sitting to a standing position for working therapy, but is totally unsuitable for lifting a patient from a prone lying position to the sitting or standing position.
Patient lifting frames and slings may be used to lift patients who have a tendency to epilepsy or similar uncontrolled body movements. It is therefore of prime importance that the patient should not be able to damage himself or herself on the equipment. That is a principal reason why lifting frames have not been more widely adopted, and why slings, which are much more difficult to use and which register a high incidence of patient fear and intolerance, are still in widespread use. It is an object of the invention to provide a lifting frame that is suitable for use with epileptic patients as well as those who are not liable to fits but who nevertheless are not able properly to support their heads and limbs, as well as patients who can support and control their heads and limbs but whose body mass makes it impossible for nursing staff, healthcare staff or carers to lift them in a satisfactory manner at present. It is also an object of the invention that the lifting frame is capable of moving a patient easily between the face-up lying, sitting and standing positions.
In this specification the terms “up”, “upper”, “low”, “lower”, “above” and “beneath” are used with reference to the normal vertical attitude of a patient lifting frame when it is suspended from a patient lifting hoist. The terms “front”, “back”, “forwardly” and “rearwardly” are used with reference to the front and back of a patient supported by such a lifting frame.